#$%@!!!!!

Not one person knows what this title is. Why is that? One word, censorship, and that’s something that just shouldn’t be done. I believe life shouldn’t be censored. Many people don’t mind it, but it is something that just shouldn’t be done. It is, in a way, disgraceful to humankind.

Censorship is defined as the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor. The first censorship law was established in the year 300 in China. It was used in wars, such as WWII, to make the Nazis look bad in the Allied countries’ eyes, or good in the Central Powers’ eyes, and it is still used today.

I have been a victim of censorship as well. In my school, we do a segment called Wego Through the Tube, where a group of people make a short video to show to the school. My video was a spoof of Rudy. We got voted on, but were censored because of a small misunderstanding joke involving the Jewish Reilgion. It was really annoying that we would get censored from such a small thing. It’s unfair, because it really wasn’t offensive either. People should just accept the fact that others are going to use certain words to get points across. After all, they’re just words, it’s not like people are getting physically hurt, they should just grow up and move on and not let little words bother them.

All this censorship also raises the question; do people really think that the human body and all things that come out of it are ugly or bad? To me it seems like the people who do the censoring do feel that way. They cut out nudity, which is natural, language, which is also natural, and as stated above, they’re just words and don’t mean much. They also cut other things like blood and violence. Those are all natural things of life, and are considered beautiful in some way.

Yet another case of censorship comes alive in a television show, Family Guy. In this particular episode, they mock the FCC which angers them. They then totally overreact and decide to censor real life. They use the black bars when people get out of showers, and they use an air horn whenever someone says something inapproriate. This really annoys the residents of the house, and if it happened to me, I’d be extremely annoyed. However, the most annoying part is the simple fact that they can’t do anything about it.

Therefore, real life shouldn’t be censored; it’s unfair, and unnecessary. Life isn’t ugly, there’s no reason to censor certain things out of programs and events. Remember this next time things are censored and it ruins your program or other event. This, I believe.

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.